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Interesting Stuff Thread

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    #3422
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,878 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    If they're a 'think tank', are we a sceptic tank?

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #3423
    PopePalpatine
    Registered Users Posts: 11,842 ✭✭✭✭PopePalpatine


    ninja900 wrote: »
    If they're a 'think tank', are we a sceptic tank?

    Wrong way around. :pac:


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    #3424
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    ninja900 wrote: »
    If they're a 'think tank', are we a sceptic tank?
    We might be a "skeptic tank", but Iona can get by without the 'k'.


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    #3425
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,878 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    'Skeptic' = EN-US
    'Sceptic' = EN-GB

    No?

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #3426
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    ninja900 wrote: »
    'Skeptic' = EN-US
    'Sceptic' = EN-GB
    Historically, that may well have been true, but in recent usage, 'sceptic' with a 'c' generally refers to traditional philosophical scepticism in which the theoretical possibility of certainty is formally denied and things tend to resolve quite quickly to a fairly useless quagmire of uncertainty, bootstrap-pulling and forelock-tugging. 'Skepticism' with a 'k' generally refers to scientific skepticism in which the rules of science are accepted and the likelihoods of various claims are, in turn, accepted roughly in proportion to the amount of scientific evidence which supports them.

    Antiskeptic appears to believe the two are the same.


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    #3427
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,878 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    Yeah I know the 'skeptic' movement has mandated the 'k', that's the reason I used the 'c' word :) the joke, such as it is after three rounds of tautological explanation, didn't really scan with a 'k'

    Quagmire? 20120908140908!Glenn_Quagmire.png Giggity! :pac:

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #3428
    ShooterSF
    Registered Users Posts: 8,824 ✭✭✭ShooterSF


    Zillah wrote: »
    Well, it turns out that the IONA Institute have teamed up with the US National Organization for Marriage to produce a rather vile anti-gay video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0xOGVw3KJE

    Loathe as I am to boost its views, it is getting utterly hammered in the comments and votes. Remind me, how are we defining "think tank" these days?

    Anyway it is vile and we should oppose it, but I find myself getting really annoyed at all the people I know calling for it to be taken down. Knee jerk reactions to limit the free speech of others is a bad thing people.

    Indeed I'm all for free speech and would be saddened to see a platform to air their bigotry taken away from bigots. How else are they meant to put people off? But it would not surprise me if say youtube have t&cs which limit speech on their site, a right any website owner (incuding boards.ie) has too. Many would limit "hate speech" along with pornography etc. and I guess it would be in their right to take down such videos even if I think they shouldn't.


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    #3429
    The Black Oil
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 18,204 CMod ✭✭✭✭The Black Oil


    Alan Alda's flame challenge.

    http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/12/alan-alda-challenges-scientists-.html

    http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/the-flame-challenge-2/

    Thought this was pretty cool when I heard about it. Not the first time I've heard about him being nerdy/geeky/sciencey. So great to see someone trying to get kids interested in science, let's face it, it's not the best at communicating its message, and I'm a little weary of Mythbusters et al.

    I hope we can all be as passionate about something when we're at his age. :)

    Moderator: Television, Psychology and Dublin County North.

    CMod: Entertainment



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    #3430
    Sulla Felix
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,442 ✭✭✭Sulla Felix


    The Black Oil wrote: »
    Alan Alda's flame challenge.

    http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/12/alan-alda-challenges-scientists-.html

    http://www.centerforcommunicatingscience.org/the-flame-challenge-2/

    Thought this was pretty cool when I heard about it. Not the first time I've heard about him being nerdy/geeky/sciencey. So great to see someone trying to get kids interested in science, let's face it, it's not the best at communicating its message, and I'm a little weary of Mythbusters et al.

    I hope we can all be as passionate about something when we're at his age. :)
    There's a really funny Scientific American 2 part podcast interviewing him. He did a SciAm/PBS joint production for years too.


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    #3431
    Dades
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 25,558 Mod ✭✭✭✭Dades


    http://sciencefriday.com/segment/03/23/2012/alan-alda-asks-scientists-what-is-a-flame.html

    I listened to this podcast of him talking about the "flame" challenge last year. :)
    Only things is it's really hard to differentiate between his voice and the host, Ira!

    Also, my mum loves Alan Alda.


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    #3432
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Can't remember if this page has drifted by...

    The good folks at Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute, the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, have published two free books on the two telescopes.

    http://hubblesite.org/ibooks/

    The two PDF files are avaiable here:

    http://hubblesite.org/ibooks/media/hst_discoveries_pub-v1-3.pdf
    http://hubblesite.org/ibooks/media/jwst_science_pub-v1-2.pdf

    Prepare for some pretty pictures!


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    #3433
    Kivaro
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,105 ✭✭✭Kivaro


    Just keeping religion in context.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50348563/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.UOZRLm80WSo

    And how many galaxies are there?


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    #3434
    The Mad Hatter
    Registered Users Posts: 4,718 ✭✭✭The Mad Hatter


    Quantum gas created below absolute zero
    It may sound less likely than hell freezing over, but physicists have created an atomic gas with a sub-absolute-zero temperature for the first time1. Their technique opens the door to generating negative-Kelvin materials and new quantum devices, and it could even help to solve a cosmological mystery.


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    #3435
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    ^^^
    NS wrote:
    Normally, most particles have average or near-average energies, with only a few particles zipping around at higher energies. In theory, if the situation is reversed, with more particles having higher, rather than lower, energies, the plot would flip over and the sign of the temperature would change from a positive to a negative absolute temperature, explains Ulrich Schneider, a physicist at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany.
    Can somebody please explain this -- it makes no sense to me as written!


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    #3436
    sink
    Registered Users Posts: 4,314 ✭✭✭sink


    Very Cool!:D

    I can't wrap my head around it either. But one thing grabbed me, subzero particles can be repelled by gravity, could this be anti-gravity?


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    #3437
    kiffer
    Registered Users Posts: 2,097 ✭✭✭kiffer


    It's not colder than cold, it's technically hotter than infinitely hot... Yeah. Needless to say it's crazy physics land.
    The Wiki page for negative temp. is interesting but the first lines of first paragraph are a little misleading. You have to jump down to "Heat and molecular energy distribution" and the examples section, then you get a better idea of what's going on.


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    #3438
    TPD
    Registered Users Posts: 7,814 ✭✭✭TPD


    sink wrote: »
    Very Cool!:D

    I can't wrap my head around it either. But one thing grabbed me, subzero particles can be repelled by gravity, could this be anti-gravity?

    They have a couple of years to get it polished and into a hoverboard!


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    #3439
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users Posts: 7,771 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    robindch wrote: »
    ^^^ Can somebody please explain this -- it makes no sense to me as written!

    Reading the wiki page on negative temperature, this is how I understand it:

    While you can think of temperature as the sum of kinetic energy in a system (which I did for years, thinking I was smart and sciency for doing so, now I need re-evaluate it, thanks science! :rolleyes::pac:) it turns out its better to think of it defined by statistical mechanics instead.

    Temperature is not just the amount of energy a system has in its various modes (vibrational, rotational etc.), its also effected by the ratio of particles in one particular mode versus another. The equation given is: 82da36d8b2f571217625bde29bfa8cc9.png where T is temperature, qrev is thermal energy and S is entropy.
    Normally every mode is nearly equally populated and if you add energy, they can exchange energy with each other, so energy added gives a positive temperature.

    But if you isolate a finite mode like nuclear spin (ie you can only have two nuclear spin modes, up or down) and use the right energy-giving techniques (eg radio frequency techniques), you can have the atoms in the lower energy node move to the higher energy node (down spin to up spin, or vice-versa). This results in an increase of the energy system (qrev), but because the modes aren't populated 50:50 any more, a decreases of the entropy of the system (S). This is what gives a negative temperature.


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    #3440
    Mark Hamill
    Registered Users Posts: 7,771 ✭✭✭Mark Hamill


    Some interesting things here:
    27 science fictions that became science facts in 2012


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    #3441
    magicbastarder
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 48,316 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    Kivaro wrote: »
    And how many galaxies are there?
    at *least* two dozen.


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    #3442
    Sarky
    Closed Accounts Posts: 31,967 ✭✭✭✭Sarky


    The Mad Hatter wrote: »
    Quantum gas created below absolute zero

    That is f*cking amazing. SCIENCE!


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    #3443
    Liamario
    Registered Users Posts: 2,094 ✭✭✭Liamario


    SCIENCE BE PRAISED!!!


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    #3444
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 25,611 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    I think I'm just gonna say "**** it, that's enough" because every time I think I understand something it turns out it's a bull**** model.


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    #3445
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    North Korea is famous for needing very short rulers:

    http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/12439/20121001/penis-size-study-113-countries-shows-who.htm


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    #3446
    joseph brand
    Registered Users Posts: 4,537 ✭✭✭joseph brand


    Thorium Reactors.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK367T7h6ZY


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    #3447
    Liamario
    Registered Users Posts: 2,094 ✭✭✭Liamario


    RE Thorium-

    He states at the end that we will never run out of this stuff, it's simply too common.

    This doesn't make sense to me. It's either renewable or it's not. Can thorium be created?


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    #3448
    sink
    Registered Users Posts: 4,314 ✭✭✭sink


    Liamario wrote: »
    RE Thorium-

    He states at the end that we will never run out of this stuff, it's simply too common.

    This doesn't make sense to me. It's either renewable or it's not. Can thorium be created?

    Well technically there is no such thing as renewable energy, so called renewables have their origin in either solar or geothermal energy both of which are nuclear in source. Nuclear fusion in the case of solar and radioactive isotope decay in geothermal. However they will not run out of fuel for billions of years so we tend to not get concerned.

    Thorium is an extremely common element in the earths crust, it's found everywhere and is about as common as lead. We can dig up lakes of the stuff. Uranium 238 used in current reactor technology is on par with platinum and only slightly more common than gold, that is to say you could put all the uranium 238 we've dug out of the earth throughout history into a small stadium the size of Wimbledon.

    Current uranium based reactors are only 0.5% efficient that is to say only 0.5% of the extremely rare isotope we put into the reactor comes out as useful energy. Theoretically an LFTR reactor could have efficiency of somewhere around 80-90%, that is to say that 80-90% of the extremely common element we put into the reactor can be taken out as useful energy.

    Suffice to say that we aren't going to be running out of fuel for LFTR reactors for a very very long time.


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    #3449
    robindch
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,399 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Here's a flight nobody will ever make:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08LBltePDZw


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    #3450
    Sulla Felix
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,442 ✭✭✭Sulla Felix


    Wasn't sure where to put this but JP Donleavys interview by Grey Byrne is being aired this sunday. From the ad, neither of them are particularly impressed with the other. Might be interesting if Gay lets him finish a thought.


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    #3451
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,878 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    sink wrote: »
    Uranium 238 used in current reactor technology is on par with platinum and only slightly more common than gold, that is to say you could put all the uranium 238 we've dug out of the earth throughout history into a small stadium the size of Wimbledon.

    Current uranium based reactors are only 0.5% efficient that is to say only 0.5% of the extremely rare isotope we put into the reactor comes out as useful energy.

    Nitpick - the fissionable isotope of uranium is U-235 not 238 ;)
    0.5% would be (roughly, depending on reactor type) the proportion of the original natural uranium you started up with that you could 'burn' up in the reactor. Maybe half or two-thirds of the U-235 - the fuel gets less reactive with time and some reactor designs can tolerate this better than others.

    Life ain't always empty.



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